Assembling an integrated circuit package often involves attaching a die to a lead frame. As an additional part of assembly, bond wires are used to electrically connect the conductive leads of the lead frame to the die's bond pads. The die/lead frame assembly is then encased in a housing with the outer ends of the conductive leads remaining exposed in order to allow electrical communication with external circuitry. The die's architecture may represent one of many circuitry configurations, such as a Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) circuit or, more specifically, a synchronous DRAM (SDRAM) circuit.
The high speed synchronous operations associated with SDRAM circuitry often involve communication with an external device such as a data bus. Occasionally, the data bus may be relatively wide in comparison to the standard width of prior art SDRAM dies. The width of the data bus, in turn, requires an appropriate number of conductive leads positioned to accommodate the bus. Further, the position of the conductive leads and their spacing limitations require a certain amount of die space for bond pad connection. However, the prior art does not provide a die having one particular region that can provide enough bond pads to accommodate all of the conductive leads. Rather, the architecture of the die as found in prior art allows for bond pads to be located in different areas of the die. Consequently, conductive leads of different lengths are needed to connect the bond pads to the relatively wide data bus. These differing lengths slow the operations of the SDRAM, or any semiconductor device for that matter, as it takes longer for signals to travel through the longer conductive leads. Thus, if synchronized signals are desired, the speed of the device is limited by the speed of signal propagation through the longest conductive lead. The longer leads also have a greater inductance associated with them, thereby further slowing signal propagation. Moreover, the inductance in the longer conductive leads is different from the inductance associated with the relatively short conductive leads. This imbalance in induction makes synchronizing the signals even more difficult.
Thus, it would benefit the art to have a die configuration that provides bond pads in a common location such that all of the conductive leads of the lead frame could be the same length. It would further benefit the art if the die configuration allowed uniformly short conductive leads. Indeed, this desire is mentioned in U.S. Pat. No. 5,408,129, by Farmwald, et al., which discloses a high-speed bus as well as memory devices that are adapted to use the bus. Specifically, Farmwald '129 discloses a narrow multiplexed bus, as demonstrated by Fan-wald's preferred embodiment, wherein the bus comprises only nine bus lines. Accordingly, Fannwald's narrow bus allows for a relatively low number of bond pads on the die of a memory device. Farmwald '129 concludes that it would be preferable to place the small number of bond pads on one edge of each die, as that would allow for short conductive leads. Fan-wald '129 at col. 18, In. 37-43. However, it is possible to do so under Farmwald '129 only because the "pin count . . . can be kept quite small" due to the narrow architecture of the bus. Id. at In. 17-18.
Contrary to the teachings in Farmwald '129, it would be advantageous at times to accommodate a relatively wide bus requiring a large number of pins. It would therefore be additionally advantageous to provide a die capable of providing the correspondingly large number of bond pads on one side of the die.